Anita,

I think you hit the nail on the head. His relationship with his father was strained and he spoke of his father negatively. He said his father had extreme social anxiety and instead of dealing with it, he attempted to control every situation so it went exactly the way he wanted it to go. If his father couldn’t control it, he would avoid it. The resentment he felt towards his father was palpable whenever he talked about him. He would talk about essentially battling his father, how he used conversations about, say, where they would go out to dinner as an opportunity to “not let him control the situation.” He would always say things along the lines of “I’m not going to let him get away with this behavior.”

His conversations with his father, that I witnessed or that he related to me, often seemed like a battle of wills. I’d watch them both argue about something really insignificant, each stubbornly claiming the other was wrong and didn’t know what they were talking about. And that’s always what it was about- being right. They both just had to be right. Again, it was one of those situations where I couldn’t really say anything to get him to see a new perspective, have him try to let go and accept his father for who he was instead of trying to change him or show him that he was wrong. His anger around the situation was so intense that I just instinctively knew better than to try to say anything about it.

I see now that he was playing that dynamic out in our relationship. He probably saw my attempts to set boundaries or have my wants/needs addressed as me trying to control the situation. His father has anxiety, and I have anxiety, therefore I was just like his father. So he treated me the way he treats his father- by showing and explaining how he is right, by making me feel like I was wrong or bad for wanting to do things differently. And yes- by being angry. I’m seeing that now, all of the ways that he was very angry and frustrated with me for the smallest things I would do.

Perhaps I was always trying to have a conversation about what works best for both parties, but knowingly or not, he was always engaging in a battle of wills. I see how that played out in his “ideal” way a relationship should function- he plans things and I go along, then I plan things and he goes along. He had no interest in truly working together, just taking turns submitting to each other’s wishes. Except, of course, I ended up doing the submitting, and the few times he did things “my way” were used against me when I tried to talk about how things weren’t working for me. We went over that point again and again, and I could never really get him to see my perspective.

I’m also seeing now that this is perhaps why I endured the relationship for as long as I did, and why I felt compelled to keep trying to make it work. My step-father was a very angry man, and had an angry way of relating. My childhood with him was always about structuring our lives, days, and behaviors around “not making Mark mad.” He was never physically abusive, so I’m not sure that any of us understood how threatened we were by his anger. I remember once my Mom took me and my brother out for ice cream, and she was frantic about us hiding all of the evidence, and adamant about how we were to never tell him about it, how it was our secret. I felt bad and wrong for even just existing, for being a kid and doing kid things. Everything was always tense, I felt like I always had to be on guard lest I make a mistake and set him off. Maybe that’s why I can handle relationships that aren’t peaceful- some part of me thinks tension is normal in relationships.

And even to this day, though she divorced him years ago, my Mom will still talk about my step-dad’s good qualities, how he was a good provider and a hard worker. I think I was essentially trained to be submissive to angry men, and to look at their anger towards me as a sign that I had done something wrong. If I’m honest with myself, my father also has a temper and was often angry, and I had to tiptoe around him as well. His anger issues have gotten exponentially better in the last 5 years or so, but he was angry throughout my childhood. Maybe that’s what I subconsciously think love and relationships with men looks like- waiting out the anger, trying to change myself so they are less angry.

I’m getting pretty emotional typing all of this out. If all of this is true, which it feels like it is, I struggle with what I do with the information. How do I break this pattern? How do I recognize the anger for what it is early on? I want and know I need to take some time before I begin dating again, but I want to make sure I know how to break this pattern before I try to put myself out there again.